Ladies And Germs

The New York City Council convenes on the second floor of City Hall, in an august chamber with a frescoed ceiling. On a recent Saturday, the chamber was open, but empty. “Over here!” a voice called from an adjacent room. Seated around a table were nine current and former City Hall reporters. Average age: nearly eligible for a reduced-fare MetroCard. Average outfit: rumpled shirt, jeans, maybe a sweater vest. They were the writers of the Inner Circle Show, a political-satire revue that has been staged nearly every year since 1923, and is notable for luring the mayors of the City of New York onstage, sometimes in drag. Shelly Strickler, the show’s director, said, “You got any good Cuomo jokes?”

“No joke is too bad for us,” Bob Liff, formerly with Newsday, said. “Every year, we try to get in some stupid line about the town of Coxsackie.”

The head writer, Larry Sutton—ex-News, now at OK!—read from the opening of Act II. “Lord Cuomo,” he said, “the Mayor of Sherwood Forest is approaching from the left! He still wants us to approve his repugnant Pre-K tax plan!”

“Yes, thanks,” Sutton said, making a note. He continued reading, now as Cuomo: “The day I approve a new tax in an election year is the day Sandra Lee’s kitchen gets four stars from Michelin.”

Andrew Siff, a broadcaster with the local NBC affiliate, asked, “Should we do something else there? Maybe about Alec Baldwin?”

“Baldwin as his new head of anger management?” Sutton said.

“We did something like that a few years ago,” Strickler said. Next joke: “I’m opposed to fracking,” Sutton read. “Why? It gives me gas.”

In 1923, the Times reported that the Inner Circle was “composed exclusively of the men covering politics on the city newspapers.” The group now includes women, broadcasters, and bloggers. Cigars are no longer allowed at rehearsals, but the tenor of the show remains intact: hoary slapstick, wigs, parody songs in the mode of Allan Sherman. The show, which takes place this year on March 22nd at the Hilton, is attended by the city’s political brass; all proceeds go to local charities. After an intermission, the Mayor always performs a “rebuttal,” often with the help of Broadway ringers. The photographs that helped sink Rudolph Giuliani’s Presidential campaign in 2008—Rudy as a platinum blonde in a sequinned gown—were from an Inner Circle performance.

Siff tried out a song about Albany, to the tune of “Honesty,” by Billy Joel (“Everyone is so untrue”). Then Inner Circle members dressed as horses—the ones Mayor de Blasio has threatened to ban from Central Park—would sing a parody of the “Mister Ed” theme, titled “Bill the Mare.”

“Are they going to get that ‘mare’ is a pun on ‘mayor’?” Strickler said.

Next came a duet between “Caroline Kennedy,” the new Ambassador to Japan, and “Masahiro Tanaka,” the new Yankees pitcher. It was to the tune of “The Siamese Cat Song,” from “Lady and the Tramp.” (Kennedy: “I just have to kissy-face and give some hugs.” Tanaka: “I must very careful be I take no drugs.”)

Sutton called for a break. Over egg sandwiches, the writers discussed news from beyond the metro area, including the crisis in Crimea (“Not good for the Jews”). “We’re coming off of twelve long years of Bloomberg,” Strickler said. “He was a great sport, and the shows were always fun—but how many times can you do rich jokes?”

“De Blasio is manna from Heaven,” John Slattery, of CBS, said. “The fights over the schools. The snow.”

“Normally, with a new mayor, not much happens,” Strickler said. “With him, it’s something new every week.”

“And his speeches about taxing the rich!” Slattery said. “It didn’t take us long to come up with the Robin Hood theme.”

“When something happens—the Huma story, the Christie story—we do think about it as news, because we are also reporters,” Strickler said. “But I’ve got to say, the first thing you think is, This is gonna be great for the show.”

They continued the table read. “We should add an Eva Moskowitz joke,” Liff said, referring to the charter-school founder and de Blasio antagonist.